When he saw that I’d brought a stranger with me he retreated behind his most affable oriental smile and fell silent. But Maloney simply chatted all the more, and won my heart by proving not just a lover of Chinese food like myself, but a real connoisseur. Normally when I ate there I would let Wu Sei do the ordering, then enjoy whatever was brought without bothering to find out whether the finely-chopped delicacies were pork, rose-petal soup or bamboo. Maloney conducted himself like a man discriminating between veal escalope and boeuf à la mode; he could distinguish seventeen flavour gradations of chop suey, and he won my unstinting admiration.

“Which way are you going?” he asked me after lunch.

I told him.

“Would you curse me if I went part of the way with you?”

Now I was really surprised.

“Tell me,” he asked, with some embarrassment, as we strolled along: “you’re a bloody German, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no. I’m Hungarian.”

“Hungarian?”

“Hungarian.”

“What’s that? Is that a country? Or are you just having me on?”

“Not at all. On my word of honour, it is a country.”

“And where do you Hungarians live?”

“In Hungary. Between Austria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.”

“Come off it. Those places were made up by Shakespeare.”

And he roared with laughter.

“Alright, so you’re a Hungarian … Good country, that. And what language do you Hungarians speak?”

“Hungarian.”

“Say something in Hungarian.”

It was some years since I had last spoken the language and, strangely moved, I recited some Ady:

Mikor az ég furcsa, lila-kék

S találkára mennek a lyányok,

Ó, be titkosak, különösek

Ezek a nyári délutánok.

(Under a strange, lilac-blue sky

The girls stroll to their assignations;

Mysterious, enigmatic

Summer afternoons.)

“Very nice. But you don’t fool me. That was Hindustani. It means: ‘Noble stranger, may the Gods dance on your grave in their slippers.’ I’ve heard that one before. However, since you’re the first Hungarian I’ve met, let’s do something to celebrate this splendid friendship. Come and have dinner with me tonight. Please, I’m asking you. If you find me a bit mad, don’t worry—you’ll get used to it, everybody does. And anyway there’ll be three of us. I’ll introduce you to a very clever chap, just down from Oxford, nephew of some Lord or other. He’s a scream. He can get his mouth round five-syllable words you’ve never even heard of, easy as you could say ‘hat’.”

After a little hesitation I accepted. I love meeting new people, and as it happened I had nothing else to do. To tell the truth, I was rather bowled over by the fact that he was inviting me to the Savoy, a place so grand I would never have been able to afford to go there at my own expense. I even began to see Maloney in a new light. Mad, I said to myself, but a gentleman.

We met that evening in the bar.

I found him there in the company of a young man: a tall, very slim young man with a remarkably engaging, delicate and intelligent face; rather effeminate, perhaps, with the athletic sort of effeminacy that characterises so many interesting Oxford men.

“Allow me to introduce you to the Hon Osborne Pendragon,” said Maloney.

“Pendragon?” I exclaimed. “Would you perhaps be related to the Earl of Gwynedd?”

“As a matter of fact, I have the honour to be his nephew,” he replied, in a curiously exaggerated and affected drawl. “What’s your cocktail?”

My least concern just then was a cocktail.

“Might you be spending your summer vacation at Llanvygan?” I asked.

“That is absolutely correct. I’m off to the family home in Wales the day after tomorrow.”

“I’m going there myself, fairly soon.”

“Bathing no doubt in the sea off Llandudno? I prefer a private bathroom, myself. Fewer people, and rather more select.”

“No, no.”

“Or perhaps you’re off to climb Snowdon?”

“Not at all.”

“Where else does one go in North Wales?”

“Llanvygan, for example.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Earl has very kindly invited me to his place at Llanvygan.”

At this point Maloney gave vent to an ancient Irish battle cry.

“Man, man!” he roared, and almost dislocated my arm.

“Well?”

“So we can travel together! Osborne has invited me too. What a coincidence! First of all, I ask myself, how did I end up in the Reading Room of the British Museum? Well, we all have our moments.